>> ryan: today, we are with john kelly. johnkelly is a personal injury attorney in phoenix, arizona. he's agreed to answer some onlinequestions for us. if you are in a situation right now where you are looking for personalinjury attorney, one of the things i would recommend is you can look online, look atsome of the reviews that have been posted. in the case of john, he's got some great reviewson google, yelp, facebook, and avvo. in fact on avvo he's got a superb avvo rating andthat's from not just clients but also other attorneys as well. he's agreed to answer yourquestions, so if you have some questions for him, all you have to do is post them in thecomments and he will get back to you with an answer. obviously, you can reach out tohim directly as well. with that said, john,
let us go ahead and go in to the first questionthat was posted. let us see. i was in a car accident and i am considering settling withthe insurance company. i have read that in arizona the insurance company has to get backto me within 30 days. is this true and if so does this mean that if i settle my casei would get paid within 30 days? >> john: well, the insurance company askedto get back to you within a reasonable amount of time after you have made them efforts tosettle you claim. that might be considered 30 days; they may take a little bit longerthan that. it kind of depends on the communication but the reality is it sounds like this personhas a number in mind what they wanted to settle. they are just wondering how long it is goingto take them to get their check and that can
be different with each insurance company becausea lot of insurance company is actually have their head quarters in different states andso the check is either be coming from another state. also there are some documents thatthey would have to sign off on before they settle on their claim, a release, they wouldrelease, the insurance company, so that can take a little bit of time too. but generally,once you are to the point of negotiating and making the settlement on your claim it canbe a matter of a week before you actually have that check in your hands. so it can govery quickly at that point. >> ryan: okay, all right. next question isuppose to read is; i was in a major accident last year. it's been almost a month in thehospital and missed work. i've been offered
a large settlement which i believe is fine.if i meet with an attorney do i have to pay them out of percentage of this settlementand if so why would i do that? >> john: well, the answer is that you do notneed to pay an attorney to meet with him. most personal injury attorneys will give youa cris consultation. and in my office i will meet with the client and give them a consultation,go over with their case, talk to them about what happened especially in a case like thiswhere it sounds like there were pretty major injuries. there is a need of some time togo over that and reality is that any attorney is going to want to know all the facts beforethey would get involved in actually enter a pre-agreement. so that is where the paymentwould come in. is if the attorney and the
client decided to enter a pre-agreement andtypically it is a contingency pre-agreement so it would be a percentage of the settlementbut that all can be negotiated with the attorney. sit down and talk to you attorney about yourcase. so it is always a good idea to at least talk to an attorney about the settlement becauseyour settlement maybe it could be a lot more value there to your case than what they areoffering you. you never know for sure until you've had someone who really knows the knotsand bolts of these kinds of cases to give you an advice of whether that is a fair offer. >> ryan: okay. all right, it makes a lot ofsense. the next we have is pretty short and simple. do you settle all your cases or youare taking them to trial?
>> john: i do not settle all my cases howeverjust like in every state in united states, the number i think is somewhere around 95percent of cases settle sort of trial and arbitration. what that means is the grim majorityof cases that most attorneys get that are personal injury cases do end settled. theones that do end up with trial are the ones that have either fault issues, liability issues,that means who is at fault or evaluation differences. the insurance company believes that the caseis valued at one amount and the attorney thinks it is valued at another amount; they can'tcome into a fair agreement. but like i said, those are the rare cases and the majorityof the cases a so settle sort of trial. >> ryan: okay, all right. this is a fairlyspecific question. i was in an accident over
a year ago. it was not my fault. i did notreceive any serious injuries. however, i started to get numbness in my shoulder which i believeis from the accident. do i have any recourse? >> john: you potentially have some recourse;however it is a difficult case because if your injury manifested so far after the accidentthere needs to be a reason that we can show that that was from the accident. so a medicalprovider or a medical doctor would need to evaluate this individual and a make the determinationthat this is something that is even plausible for someone to have an injury that wasn'tan injury initially but later you have that manifest. so those are difficult cases, youneed to sit down with the attorney to see if they can get you into the right courseand get your evaluation done or you can go
to someone yourself and have them determineif it is plausible that the injury is related to the accident. if we can get pass that thenwe have the causation and then you most definitely could have a claim. >> ryan: okay, all right. i want to go aheadand thank you for your time. if you have any questions directly for john all you need tois post them to the comment section below. he gets back typically within 24-48 hourson most questions. obviously, you can give his office a call or check out his websitefor more information. john, i want to thank you for your time. >> john: thank you ryan.